Earlier today at the second annual Lake Nona Impact Forum, Tavistock Group and Florida Blue announced the development of the Florida Blue Innovation Center at Lake Nona Medical City featuring the Florida Blue Collaborative Imagination Center. The 92,000-square-foot, three-story building will feature both wet lab and office space. Tavistock anticipates groundbreaking for the Florida Blue Innovation Center in the first half of 2014, with a grand opening scheduled in 2015.

Pat Geraghty, Chairman and CEO of Florida Blue, said, “Florida Blue’s mission is to help people and communities achieve better health. We see our Collaborative Imagination Center within the Florida Blue Innovation Center as the embodiment of the future of health care, and we look forward to utilizing the facility in ways to bring true innovative thought to life that will positively impact health.” He added, “We can accomplish this by investing boldly in innovation and partnering with like-minded people and organizations who share our vision for imagining the future. Lake Nona is a place we believe can do just that, and we are committed to helping to lead that charge here.”

Located in the heart of Lake Nona Medical City across from the University of Florida Research & Academic Center and Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, the Florida Blue Innovation Center will establish a center of gravity for health and life sciences innovation, according to Dr. Thaddeus Seymour, Jr., President of the Lake Nona Institute and host of the 2013 Lake Nona Impact Forum.

“The Innovation Center marks an important stage in the development of the health and life sciences cluster at Lake Nona,” said Seymour. “Anchored by Florida Blue, the building will provide Central Florida’s entrepreneurial ecosystem with a new launch pad that will take advantage of the exceptional research, health care and technology capabilities available at Lake Nona. The addition of much needed laboratory and incubation space will accelerate the formation and growth of the life sciences commercial sector of our economy, creating high quality new jobs and significant value creation for decades to come.”

Florida Blue will serve as the building’s anchor tenant with its Collaborative Imagination Center. Other tenants will include a 15,000 square-foot life sciences incubator to be managed by the University of Central Florida in partnership with the University of Florida. Funding for the initial planning and startup of the incubator has been provided by $2.5 million in state funding made possible through the efforts of Mayor Buddy Dyer and the City of Orlando. Tavistock is actively recruiting companies and organizations to occupy the remaining space of the Innovation Center, which is served by the same advanced technology infrastructure that has earned Lake Nona the “Iconic City” designation by Cisco. Once the first building is fully occupied, Tavistock will begin recruiting for the second of four planned adjacent innovation-focused buildings in the heart of Lake Nona Medical City.